The Kingdom of Copper characters

Appears from the start

The Banu Nahida of Daevabad and the only acknowledged Nahid healer alive, married to the emir Muntadhir and confined to a palace she is not permitted to leave. Five years after she was brought to the city she has become a formidable healer, but her position rests entirely on the king's tolerance, and she survives it the way she survived Cairo: by watching, bargaining, and giving away nothing she does not have to. She still does not know who her parents were.

Also known as Alizayd al Qahtani, Ali

Appears from the start

The king's younger son, exiled to the Geziri provinces and widely expected to die there. He survived, and in the desert village that took him in he has found a use for what the marid left in him: he can call water where there is none. He hides what that means, prays it will fade, and has built a life among people who value him for the well he found rather than the name he carries.

Also known as Darayavahoush e-Afshin, the Afshin

Appears from the start

The Nahids' warrior, killed on Daevabad's lake and raised again by Banu Manizheh, restored to the body and the unbound magic his people held before Suleiman's punishment. He is bound to Manizheh's service and to a plan he did not choose, training soldiers in a hidden camp far from the city, and he carries the memory of everything he did the last time he was handed orders and told they were necessary.

Also known as Banu Manizheh

Appears from the start

The Nahid healer the world believed the ifrit murdered twenty years ago, alive and at large beyond Daevabad's veil. She raised Dara from the dead, she has the grand wazir's loyalty, and she intends to take back the city her family lost. Nahri is her daughter, a fact Nahri does not know.

Also known as Ghassan al Qahtani

Appears from the start

King of Daevabad and bearer of Suleiman's seal. Five years on he governs by threat and hostage: he knows precisely whom each person under him loves, and he says so. He has kept Nahri obedient by naming what will happen to the Daeva tribe, and to individual Daevas, the moment she disappoints him.

Appears from the start

Emir of Daevabad and Nahri's husband, in a marriage that is a treaty rather than a partnership. Still fonder of wine, poetry and company than of governing, he has spent five years watching his father use his wife as an instrument, unable to protect her, his brother, or Jamshid e-Pramukh, whose injuries have never healed.

Appears from the start

Ghassan's daughter and the most politically capable of his children, who has spent her younger brother's exile managing the household, the court's expectations and the family's public face.

Also known as Kaveh e-Pramukh

Appears from the start

Grand wazir of Daevabad and Jamshid's father, the senior Daeva in the king's government and an unwavering advocate for what he believes his tribe is owed. He travels frequently to the Daeva provinces on the crown's business.

Also known as Jamshid e-Pramukh

Appears from the start

Kaveh's son and Muntadhir's closest companion, left partly crippled by the Afshin's arrows five years ago. No healer, Nahri included, has been able to undo the damage, and he has rebuilt a life around the limits it set.

Appears from the start

Nahri's assistant in the palace infirmary, a Daeva woman who trained under the previous Nahids and has guided Nahri's practice since she arrived. Devoted to Daeva tradition and to the restoration of her tribe's standing, she is the closest thing Nahri has to a teacher.

First appears in chapter 2

A Geziri djinn of Bir Nabat, the desert village that took Ali in after finding him half-dead. Talkative, cheerful and hard to offend, he has become Ali's closest friend and treats the prince's grim self-denial as a personal challenge.

First appears in chapter 2

A Geziri warrior of Bir Nabat, blunt and formidably capable, who fights beside Ali and has no patience at all for the politics of Daevabad.

First appears in chapter 4

An ifrit who has attached himself to Manizheh's cause. Like all his kind he is one of the original daevas who refused Suleiman's judgement, unchanged and very old, and his knowledge of what the Nahids used to be able to do is worth more to Manizheh than his sword. Nothing he offers is offered freely.

First appears in chapter 9

Ali's mother, an Ayaanle noblewoman of Ta Ntry and Ghassan's queen, who returns to Daevabad with plans of her own. Wealthy, exceptionally well connected and entirely unsentimental about court politics, she has never accepted her son's exile and does not intend to leave his future to his father.

Also known as Subhashini Sen

First appears in chapter 14

A shafit physician in Daevabad, trained in human medicine, who treats the part-human patients the Nahid infirmary will not admit. Capable and direct, she is deeply suspicious of any offer of partnership from a Nahid, and says so.